New High School Musical fan theory claims Sharpay was a victim not the villain

Besides the fact that we’re all in this together, High School Musical taught teens a lot of stuff growing up – singing and basketball go hand-in-hand, there’s not a star in heaven that we can’t reach, and basically Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez were the HEROES of the Disney series while Sharpay Evans (although fabulous) was the VILLAIN.

But what if we got it wrong all along? Well, according to a new fan theory, Ashley Tisdale’s character was misunderstood, and Sharpay was actually the real victim in the HSM universe.

On Sunday (May 14), Twitter user Karim started an epic and truly hysterical thread about Sharpay’s struggle to bop to the top, arguing that she had worked her entire life to star in East High’s musical, only to have it snatched from her grasp at the last minute by goody-two-shoes Gabriella… who if you remember rightly, turned up late to most auditions and wasn’t even serious about a career in musical theatre anyway.

Taking to Twitter, the Sharpay fan wrote: “Sharpay and Ryan have been performing since preschool,they know the stage like the back of their hands and they have a ridiculous amount of talent but not only that,they also have stage presence and know how to perform.

“Troy and singing or theater,their only experience is singing in a karaoke bar.she somehow ends up in Troy’s school and they’re just standing there looking at the sign up sheet and Sharpay shows up and she tells them that there’s always supporting roles if they wanna get in theater which is seen a bitchy move but I don’t see how that’s bitchy like people gotta start somewhere like you don’t just expect to be the star when you have no experience and going up against people like Sharpay and Ryan.”

The Twitter thread then points out that “Gabriella says she wants to audition after the auditions were already over”, and even though Mrs Darbus tells her and Troy that they can’t audition, they do so regardless because Gabriella is entitled and Troy just wants to “get in her pants”.

Karim continues that Sharpay and Ryan’s rendition of ‘What I’ve Been Looking For’ was so much better than Kelsi’s “boring ass” original, which Gabriella and Troy choose to do “standing by a piano which DOESN’T compare to what Sharpay and Ryan did”.

Yet Gabriella and Troy’s “slow boring” love song still gets them to callbacks with Sharpay and Ryan.

“Sharpay of course gets defensive about the theater because they’re literally amateurs and she’s been working her entire life in theater,” the user went on.

“So she asks mrs Darbus to change the date of the callbacks to the day where they have other stuff because they need to know where their priorities are because [in the real world] you can’t just leave rehearsals for a basketball game or to do whatever nerd stuff Gabriella does and you need to be PRESENT.”

Sharpay basically knows her worth and is demanding she and her brother be treated accordingly, rather than be cast aside for “amateurs”.

Gabriella and Troy then show up late AGAIN to the final audition, dressed in the wrong clothing and “Gabriella literally freezes” proving that she has no business being the star of a musical when she has “stage fright”.

The thread goes on to argue that theatre then becomes cool “because the most popular guy in school is doing it after they’ve been making fun of Sharpay for ages calling her a drama queen and pretty much bullying her but since Mr Popular is doing it now, it’s great”.

The ‘Sharpay’s a victim’ thread concludes that the real message of the movie is that “if you’re popular and you do everything, you’re gonna be great at it but if you dedicate your entire life to something, you’ll be seen as a villain and the bad person”.

And Ashley Tisdale naturally AGREES.

Taking to Twitter, the 31-year-old actress responded to the theory, saying: “This is hilarious!” later joking that she thinks her alter ego “was a victim from the start” because “her parents named her Sharpay”!